


The Call

by OrionRedde, Shyrstyne



Series: Cometverse [26]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assorted other characters appear but are largely unimportant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18694741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionRedde/pseuds/OrionRedde, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shyrstyne/pseuds/Shyrstyne
Summary: Demyx hears the call of something old and familiar. He’s never going to be quite the same after if he answers.





	The Call

**Author's Note:**

> * Monty python voice * and now for something completely different. 
> 
> Time to check up on how some other characters are doing now that things are (supposed to be) settling down!
> 
> Note: we’re ignoring KHUx and the implied revelation that demyx (and Luxord I suppose but he’s not in this story) have anything to do with the keykids. We had this subplot long before 3 was even announced and we just couldn’t make the new info jive with what we had planned. So we’re ignoring it. 
> 
> (I still love my keykids don’t get me wrong, they’re just functionally irrelevant to this verse)

Demyx sticks around, for a while.

Ienzo isn’t entirely sure why, but he doesn’t protest. His irreverent attitude may be grating occasionally, but he also finds relief in it’s jovial casualness sometimes. He and Even have been working non-stop, recreating a replica suited to being the new bodies for Roxas, and later Namine. It’s serious work, one that, for Roxas at least, had a definitive time limit placed upon it. Even with a body already half prepared and brought to them by Demyx and Even themselves, it’s tiring work, and as there would be no second chances everything quite simply had to be perfect.

The work for Namine is less hurried and frantic, but no less serious for its nature. He’s making something that will be a persons entire life. He cannot let it be anything less than perfect.

Even the Riku Replica, who had taken one of the bodies on the field, had been in to make sure the joining of heart and body was seamless. He hovers after, pacing nearby for nearly the entirety of Naminé’s construction. Ienzo understands his anxiety, but has to threaten him with being bodily removed from the area several times for being underfoot.

He tells himself he doesn’t take the smallest bit of pleasure actually doing so. He’s not a vengeful person, he finds, but well.. A little pleasure from a job well done was warranted, right?

He welcomes Demyx’s wry attitude and witticisms then. He interrupts the monotony, keeps him from falling too deep into his work. Reminds him why he’s working so hard in the first place, that there’s a life beyond the drab laboratory walls.

When Namine’s body is complete and she walks from the room on her own two feet, he breathes a sigh of both victory and relief.

She and the Riku Replica make camp in one of the castle’s towers, unsure of where to go next. He bids they stay close, at least for a while, as he wants to do follow ups and make sure the bodies operate as they should. It’s clear neither of them like this, but thankfully they assent. He has enough difficulties trying to get Roxas and Xion in for regular checkups as it is, even with Lea and Comets assistance.

It’s only later that day as he finally remembers to get something to eat that he catches Demyx in one of the halls, standing before an open portal.

“Are you leaving?” He asks. He tries not to sound too disappointed by that.

“Ah you guys don’t need me here.” Demyx waves him off. “I got some places to be anyways.”

“Where are you going? Will you be coming back?”

“Nowhere. Why, you want me to?” Demyx grins at him, like he fully expects to be told off.

“Of course.” Ienzo answers, and Demyx looks taken aback. “I’ve certainly enjoyed your company these last few weeks. I would be overjoyed if you were to visit.”   
  
“Aw, you make it sound like we’re friends.” Demyx laughs. Ienzo doesn’t.

“Aren’t we?”

Demyx looks at him like he’s said something strange, then rubs the back of his head.

“I mean. Uh. Sure. If you want.” He coughs awkwardly. “I’ll.. try to visit. No promises though.”

And before Ienzo can reply he steps through the portal and disappears.

Ienzo hopes he does come back.

Something warm fills his heart at the thought.

\---

Demyx falls.

The call gets louder, more insistent, the closer he gets. It’s not overpowering, it doesn’t demand, but it does pull. A quiet ‘ **here. I’m here. I’m here when you’re ready** ’ constantly bouncing between the corners of his mind. It feels so painfully familiar and nostalgic. He remembers calling to it, so very long ago, when his world had first fallen.

How old had he been then? No more than a child, reaching out to powers he couldn’t even comprehend to save himself, to try and save his family.

And now the power was calling back.

Without a heart, he hadn’t been able to hear it. The call pulls on his heartstrings more than his ears. He hadn’t known, all this time his world had been calling out to him, and he’d been ignoring it. Wouldn’t have cared even if he’d known probably. But the tiny, fledgling heart he’s regrown can hear now, as clearly as his ears can hear the plucked strings of a sitar, and he follows it faithfully.

It’s his world, his home, pieced back together now like all the rest, but he doesn’t go back to land, doesn’t check if his family is there. It was too long ago. He doesn’t remember what they even looked like, and what would they think, seeing what should be a boy showing up a man and claiming to be..

No. He doesn’t go ashore.

But he does follow the call. Deep out into the ocean, further still into the depths. Past the darkness, and into the abyss.

**‘Hello** ’ it calls,  **‘we waited’**

‘Hi’ he answers, ‘I’m here’

\----

Ienzo fiddles with the tech in his lab.

He has a couple of active projects going, though nothing so major or time consuming as the replica’s. It’s a nice break, though he’s starting to wish for something bigger to occupy his time. He considers a few subjects worth studying, and flips through the progress reports for Namine, Roxas, Xion, and the other Riku. He hopes the boy picks a new name soon, as he can’t imagine answering to ‘replica’ or ‘riku’ is particularly enjoyable for him, given his history.

Regardless, he tries to do somewhat regular checkups for all the replica bodies. He’s confident in his and Even’s work, but there was no sense in being careless when someone’s livelihood was at stake, no matter how confident you were.

They’re all stable and clear across the board so far, and though it is still early days yet, he takes that as an optimistic sign.

It does leave him somewhat bored, however. He finds himself missing Demyx. There had been no sign of him in well over two weeks now, nearly three in fact, and Ienzo tries to keep from being over worried about the lack of contact. Perhaps he was busy. Or perhaps he hadn’t cared as much as Ienzo had assumed. He shakes the thought from his head, unwilling to consider it.

He wanders in to the bathroom he’d had installed just off the laboratory main. It had been necessary when he and Even had been very nearly working around the clock to get Roxas’ body working perfectly, but now it was mostly used so he didn’t have to trek halfway across the castle to use his own.

He rifles through the mirror cabinet, looking for some hair ties. There’s a machine in the computer room that’s been acting off, and since a debug report had provided nothing he will probably have to get inside it and see if the problem was physical, which meant he would need his hair out of his face.

He’s only just found them when there’s a stirring out of the corner of his vision. Black sludge pools in the bottom of the tub, and as he watches it grows larger. It reminds him of the gathering darkness does just before a portal opens, just slightly, but.. Thicker, somehow.

The black pools upward, and then coalesces into the head and shoulders of a form.

It’s Demyx.

Or he thinks it is. He’s different somehow, there are strange slits peppered across his skin, and sharp fins sprouting from his neck and back.

And from the waist up at least, entirely naked.

Ienzo rushes forward, dropping the ties, and tries to pull him from the muck. It releases slowly, like it doesn’t quite want to let go. At his waist it holds, and though he pulls Demyx further onto the tile of the floor, there’s a trail of water and darkness left behind him.

“Demyx? Demyx!” He notes Demyx isn’t breathing. He wracks his brain, trying to remember the steps to resuscitate someone when Demyx’s eyes blink open.

All nineteen of them.

Demyx gasps, back arching, and the eyes all swing wildly in different directions. His limbs thrash out, and Ienzo tries to grab his hands to keep him from accidentally hurting himself. The tendrils of darkness around him move uninterrupted.

“Demyx it’s okay; it’s me, you’re safe, everything is fine.” He’s not sure how to do this whole calming down thing, but it appears to work as all the eyes focus in on him.

“Where-” Demyx croaks out, like he hasn’t spoken in days.

“You’re in Radiant Garden, in the castle. Everything’s okay.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Ienzo?”

“Yes,” He answers. Demyx gives a slightly hysterical laugh. “What is it?”

“It  _ is  _ you. Good. Wasn’t sure. Well that’s awkward, I only just left and here I am again.”

Ienzo frowns in confusion.

“Demyx you’ve been gone nearly three weeks.”

Demyx grin falters.

“What no I.. it was only a couple of hours, I-” He reaches a hand up, and catches notice of the webbing between the fingers. Another eye splits open in his palm and blinks at him.

He starts to laugh.

He laughs harder.

He curls in on himself, away from Ienzo’s supporting hand, and then sinks into the floor.

Ienzo stands, adrenaline and concern flooding his veins. The dark sludge is still there and the laughter has stopped. It moves along his feet, like a shadow. He hears a whisper.

“Oh stars, this is worse than being the old man’s backup heart vessel. Why do I ever listen to anyone?”

\-----

Ienzo has gained something to study, at least. He wishes it didn’t cause quite so much distress though, either to himself or to Demyx- Or rather, Myde now. They learn it together, though in spurts. Myde’s new form has essentially lost all awareness of time and space. He will often show up after several days disappearance with no knowledge that time has passed, and keeping appointments was more or less impossible.

Ienzo decides to call it a work in progress, and just hopes every time he vanishes again that he’ll remember to come back eventually.

Myde explains his world, and the call he’d felt. He called it the Abyss, something that his people had worshipped, and that he had called out to for help from as a child when his world had fallen. It was not Darkness, though it functioned similarly, but where darkness thrived on negative emotion, the Abyss stood neutral. 

Under other circumstances, Myde may not have been allowed to come back at all. The Abyss was ancient, ageless, and had not had an avatar in some time. It did not understand the ways of mortals any more than the mortals understood It. But Myde was only recently whole, and threatened to break again without his recently made connections, and so the Abyss had released him, at least partially, far sooner than normal.

Or at least, that was what Ienzo was able to glean. He made notes from Myde’s own relayed experience (which became often fragmented as he slipped in and out of awareness of which plane he existed in), and the stories of Myde’s own childhood, which of course had the possibility of being warped due to being old tales Myde himself barely remembered.

He began to find Myde in impossible spaces, bringing him impossible things. He observes Myde walk through a table without any seeming awareness that it was there at all, and he could only conclude Myde only partially existed on the physical plane, and shifted between others both at will and unconsciously. 

In the first days after his reappearance, Myde shifts between an intangible darkness, his many tentacled, many eyed self, and simply not existing at all. 

Two weeks later, Ienzo finds him eating all his granola bars, looking exactly as he did before any of this had started.

“Hey!” He says jovially, around a mouthful of granola. “You’re out of orange juice.”

“Myde! You’re looking… normal.”

“Figured if I ever wanted to go anywhere again I should figure it out. Sorry for wrecking the science show. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”   
  
“Science sh- Myde, surely you don’t believe the only reason I enjoy your company is to study you.” He protests.

“Ah it’s fine. I’m not offended. Really. Anyway I left your coffee on your desk, see ya.” He walks into a wall and vanishes.

Ienzo make a couple of small protest noises, mostly out of frustration. He turns and stalks away. The coffee is exactly where he said it would be, though it was obviously made hours ago, if not yesterday.

Ienzo chugs it back anyways.

He notes bitterly around the awful acrid taste that he has no idea how to get a hold of Myde, and since he’s somehow led Myde to believe Ienzo only sees him as a subject of study and not a friend, he has no assurance that Myde will return this time, even if he did have a reliable sense of time and space.

He needs to make some calls. 

\------

“Sure Ienzo, we can do that.” Kairi’s face fills the screen, though he can see Sora scratching his head in confusion.

“That would be much appreciated, thank you. I feel terribly that I left such an impression on him and if you could pass the message on if you see him I would be indebted to you.” He profuses.

“It’s no problem, we’re always happy to help, no debts required.” She chirps. He hears Sora in the background asking “Wait so Myde is  _ what  _ now-” as the connection clicks off.

He sighs and sits back, mentally checklisting all the people Myde is most likely to run into. Sora, Riku and Kairi, check. Comet and Lea, check. Namine, check. Roxas and Xion, check. He’s notified Even and the other apprentices too, though he doubts the personal part got through to them as much. It’s fine. As long as  _ someone _ tells him to come talk to him.

He’s been so full of so many emotions since his return to being human. It has been a wonderful experience, one he would never willingly give up again.

But he finds regret is not an emotion he’s particularly fond of.

\-------

Myde blinks.

He doesn’t know with which eyes.

There’s patterns in the air, and he traces them lazily. 

He blinks.

A busy market stall, people call out their wares, a mother and child walk through him, with no idea he’s there. He smells cooking bread, the distant salt of an ocean. It smells like home. He doesn’t want to be here.

He blinks.

The slide between dimensions is less sudden now, as he gets more used to them. They wrap around him like a blanket, and he shifts silently between them, not even disturbing the thin sheets as he goes from one destination to the other without moving at all. He feels a call.

“What do you want?”

**It’s not us**

His head tilts.

He hears a name, if a name could be pronounced with the sound of an emotion. He curls up into the darkness of the abyss, closing all his eyes, and listens. 

Was that  _ his _ name?

Oh, that was right. He had a name.

The call is sad. 

No, he thinks. That one should not be sad.

**You returned to them for a reason, child.**

Yes he did. What was it?

The Abyss nudges him.

Oh. That’s right. People. Connections. He needs to feel the world around him. Stars, what does the sand between his toes feel like again? He can’t quite remember.

“Myde.”

He was Myde.

The dimension around him shifts, and he steps through.

\-----

Ienzo sees Myde leaning against the wall next to his desk, almost looking like he’s asleep standing, and can’t help calling out.

“Myde!” Myde’s eyes blink open, then stare widely at him, blinking up from arms and face and collar bone and deep, inky black tendrils of darkness.

“Your hair is longer.” Myde says, and immediately feels dumb for saying it. To his surprise Ienzo looks like he might cry.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t wanted here, Myde, I am. I  _ did _ want to know how your new state and powers affected you, I  _ do _ want to study them, but even without them I would still very much like to have you here with me. I appreciate your company and I regret with all my heart if I made you feel as though our friendship was only scientific curiosity.” He bows deeply, eyes screwed shut, like he’s afraid of what Myde might say.

Myde himself doesn’t know.

“.. How long was I gone?” He asks instead.    
  
“A month.”

“Oh.”

Ienzo is still bowing.

“Hey, c’mon man,” Myde slides forward as much as he moves, and a black tendril pushes him back upright. “I did say I wasn’t offended.”   
  
“Just because you’re not offended doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.” Ienzo protests. “I.. I’d thought we were friends, Myde, but apparently I have failed in _ being _ a friend, and for that I apologize.”

Myde feels something well in his heart.

“Dude it’s fine, really-” Myde can’t take the kicked puppy look and tries again. “I.. accept your apology? I guess? You didn’t really do anything, I just can’t seem to get a grasp on time any more.” Phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty mortal comprehension.

“That’s not your fault,” Ienzo shakes his head, and then holds out his hand. “Do you think we could try to be friends again?”

The Abyss wells around him, buoyed by the sudden well of emotion in his heart.

“Yeah. Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Eldritch myde, henceforth affectionately known as myderitch, is our semi-omniscient fourth wall breaker and we love him


End file.
